Random Miscellany About My Life Now - Boring Work Weeks

I logged into the blog today, thinking that I would edit a nearly-finished draft of a post I was working on last month and put it up.

But then my partner texted me on his way to work: "Whatcha doing?"

It's raining and gloomy outside, and I'm in the office working on some pretty monotonous tasks today. Everyone in my office is pretty tired today, so no one's really all that talkative. The first week of each new month is always the busiest for us, so we're all working fairly hard this week (though obviously I still have time to blog!) and recovering from our holiday party* last weekend.

So I texted him back: "...eh, I did [task X] this morning, and now I'm doing [task Y]. My job is SO THRILLING. :)"

Then I went back to work and started thinking about what I wrote. And of course, since I'd already logged into the blog and sent my mind to "postacademic mode," I thought about how I'd feel if I still had a dissertation that I had to work on instead of these monotonous work tasks. Or papers to grade, or a syllabus to write, or whatever. In other words, I started thinking about how my life in my boring job compared to my life when I was a Super Important Grad Student Doing Important Groundbreaking Work.

And I realized that I'd rather work on monotonous tasks X and Y every workday for the rest of the freaking month then spend even a couple of hours trying to code data for my dissertation or trying to read some horrible blowhard's academic paper to add to my lit review, or responding to a needy student email.**

Some Miscellaneous Ramblings...

Hi all! Long time no talk!!

So apparently I'm posting a little less frequently these days ... a pattern I'll chalk up to my growing determination to focus on my offline life. Rather than spending my days holing up in front of a computer when I get home from my computer-oriented job (which was reminding me a little too much of my days in academia), I've been trying to get out and do things more often ... or to just spend timeoffline when I'm at home.

So for the past few weeks I've been holiday shopping, and meeting friends for dinner, and reading fun books, and started volunteering for a local charity. All stuff that is helping me move fully away from the mindset that I'm still kinda-sorta an academic, and into the mindset of being a regular person who has a regular job and does regular things with her spare time ... rather than just coming home and going back on the computer all night long. So far, so good!

Now, don't worry ... I won't shut down the blog or stop writing. As I've mentioned before ... it turns out that, to my surprise, I like blogging! And I'm still interested in reading and thinking about academic structure and culture and about the changing academic job market.

So don't worry - I'm not going anywhere for awhile, dear readers. Posts may be a little less frequent, but I'll still be around.

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In "me" life, things are just fine. Work is okay, family is good, life is pretty alright. Partner and I went out of town for a weekend and had a relaxing Thanksgiving, and I'm looking forward to Christmas.

And things here in Grad U City are good. An old grad student friend of mine was in town last weekend, so I had drinks with him and several of his (current grad student) friends. I was a little apprehensive about showing up as a grad school dropout ... but to my surprise, a few of the people started spontaneously talking about how nice it would be to have a regular job with actual free time for once. I kept my mouth shut about my own thoughts, but I admit ... I felt pretty good.

On Feelings, "Success," and Postacademic Life

I wrote this piece a while back and never posted it. Since I'm in the middle of a pretty big case of writers' block right now, I thought I'd throw it out here for everyone to read. I think it's a little scattered (which is why I hadn't posted it yet), but in the absence of having anything else to post right now ... here you go! :)

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I wanted to follow up on a few posts about postacademic life that have popped up in our little corner of the blogosphere in recent days.

As you know, I've been writing a lot lately about how my postacademic life is pretty great ... that I have plenty of free time, and I don't work in a giant corporate office with mind-numbing responsibilities and awful coworkers. And that's all true! I like my life now, and my job is alright, and I'm generally a lot happier than I was when I was in academia.

But the posts that others have written this week - particularly at Lauren's and Currer's places - have caused me to feel compelled to throw up a little caution flag on my blog. Not to walk back my positivity about my postacademic life, mind you - I really AM happy as a postacademic! But after reading these posts at Lauren and Currer's places, I feel like I need to take a minute to make it clear that every single second isn't all sunshine and rainbows for me either.

I'm still dealing with a little bit of (post)academic guilt, and a little bit of doubt about the decisions I've made since leaving. Even for someone like me who's landed in a pretty good place, becoming a postacademic is not easy. You can get to a good place mentally and occupationally after you leave, but it won't happen overnight and you will have a few ups and downs along the way.

And even after you do make that clean, complete break from academia and are feeling good about your life? You can still have occasional setbacks. The dream job that you took might turn out to kind of suck (like Currer's). You might miss some aspects of academic work (like some of the Type 2 leavers). Or, like me, you could wind up generally happy ... but still experience moments of worry and self-doubt every now and then.

But it doesn't mean you're doing it "wrong" - it just means you're going through a big life change and things might get a little messy. So let's talk for a minute about how that looks ... for me, anyway.

A New Blog, Just For You!

Hey all!

I was out of town yet again this weekend and have been playing catch-up all day, so this won't be a long post ... but since I just noticed it in my traffic stats, I wanted to give y'all a heads up about a new postacademic blog - Post-Academic Pathfinder.

From my quick perusal of the posts, it sounds like the new blogger is a Type 1 Leaver who's already been doing some temp work and thinking about goals for hir postacademic life.

Head over and say hi ... let hir know how supportive and helpful the postacademic community is!

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To any of my readers and my fellow bloggers on the East Coast ... stay safe. Please. Evacuate, hunker down, do whatever you need. But be smart and be safe.

Yikes!!

So I just filled out my online consolidation application for my graduate student loans. EEK! Time to pour myself a drink, I think. Seeing all of those huge numbers thrown together and filling out all of those forms was necessary, but ....... eeeeeek. Why was I so stupid, to keep taking out more and more loans???

Oh wait, I know why I was so stupid. We all were. Lauren lays it out perfectly here.

Anyway, I digress. What I actually wanted to do tonight was to post a quick PSA for anyone here in the US who will be facing student loan debt (from either undergrad or grad school) after they finish - whether they graduate or quit early like yours truly.

My advice is: Consolidate your loans. 

Do it. Go here and fill out the application.

Obviously, it won't reduce your total balance due. (If only there was a web application that would do that, huh?) But it will get your payments under control - both by bringing them into one monthly payment to one vendor rather than multiple, and most likely by lowering your monthly payments.

(In my case, it looks like I will be cutting my monthly payments at least in half by consolidating. From there, of course, I can pay more every month if I want to get it paid off sooner ... but the minimum is so much more manageable than it would have been if I didn't consolidate.)

So if you weren't aware of this possibility, bookmark that link now. We regretful academics can't turn back time and take out fewer loans, but there is something you can do to minimize the fallout going forward.

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Now that that ugly financial business is out of the way ... I thought my readers might enjoy the latest Ph.D. comic, which can be found here, and which draws on recent headlines quite amusingly.

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I hope everyone has a wonderful week, and I'll write more later...

A New(ish) Blog and a Few Other Things

Today, I'd like to introduce everyone to The Anti-Academic, who has been blogging for several months now (although it took me this long to catch on and actually link to hir blog, duhhh...).

Anti-Academic is a professor in the UK, and is currently planning hir escape from academia after slowly coming to realize that zie no longer enjoyed the work and simply needed something different. Zie details that in this post, which I thought was especially insightful. In particular, the section about growing exhausted with the lack of variety in academic jobs really caused a lightbulb to go off inside my head.

Because I've written, many times, about how I grew over time to hate academia as a profession, but I've never really been able to articulate why that was the case. And when I think about it in more detail, it doesn't really make sense. Sure, I hated doing research. But I loved teaching. And yet I don't regret leaving at all? How does that make any sense??

Well, I think Anti-Academic has hit on one reason that I don't miss it that I hadn't considered before - the lack of variety in an academic life. I enjoyed certain aspects of the job, but by the time I left I was bored and unenthused ... and didn't see either of those things changing as my career would progress. How could it, if I'd forever be doing the same things that bored me to tears in 2010?

Now, you might be thinking that I'm crazy. After all, academics work on different projects with different colleagues and teach different classes every single year! That's variety!

That's very true. You do have some variety in your day-to-day work as an academic. But the overall tasks are just about the same - month after month and year after year. Whether you teach an introductory class on Tuesday mornings in the fall semester or a seminar class on Wednesday nights in the spring semester, you still have to write a syllabus and exams and prep class activities. Whether you're writing a presentation about medieval basketweaving for a departmental seminar or about Victorian literature for an international conference, you're still just writing a presentation ... probably in the same format you've used for 50 other presentations. And whether you're working at a tiny school or a huge one, in the U.S. or in Europe? You're still working with the same kind of people (academics) doing the same activities (research and teaching).

On a day-to-day basis, then, the work can have some variety. But in the long-term? Not so much.

More Magical Thinking in Academia

More updates on my postacademic life later this week ... for today, a rant. :)

I ran across this link the other day - another post from the job market rumor forum for my former discipline of sociology. I admit, I've been checking the rumor mill from time to time this year, both because one of my close friends is on the market and my curiosity is getting the best of me ... but also, I admit, out of a more general curiosity about how this year's market is shaping up.

This year it feels like there has been a slight uptick in the number of people who are starting to "see the light" about the job market as compared to previous years - they're writing about how they're starting to realize it's all a crapshoot and that their chances of getting a good job are pretty miniscule. I've written about this before, to some extent. So far, most of the commentary has just been generalized worry about how the market "feels worse" or something similar - no one's really talking in earnest about the need to seriously think about a Plan B career.

And that's fine. The social science markets haven't contracted so much that absolutely no one is getting jobs. So I can definitely understand why some people might maintain their optimism. That's all good.

But I have noticed one thing in these "worried" threads that particularly irks me. When someone expresses concern about the job market or starts doubting their chances of landing someone permanent, there will often be a few other commenters who chime in, agreeing with them. "The number of jobs look the same, but it just feels worse," they'll say. "Surely the backlog of Ph.D.s is starting to play a role. Maybe we should start thinking of a backup plan."